As the group stood together in front of Spencer's house there was a sense of trepidation and anxiety that none of them really wanted to face. Perhaps it was the lack of lighting on the street or the fact that the entire block was dead silent, but all of them knew that something was severely wrong.

Fridge cleared his throat and the group jumped at the broken silence. Even though he was trying to regain some courage, Fridge's voice still cracked as he nudged Spencer forward. "What are you waiting for man? Someone to invite you inside your own damn house?"

"I don't see you volunteering," Spencer retorted as if his reply would make a difference.

"This seems like a Bravestone thing to me," Matt timidly replied.

Fridge immediately patted the artist on the back and nodded in agreement. "Exactly. A Bravestone thing..."

"How is this a Bravestone thing?!" Spencer incredulously asked while whispering as if raising the volume would invoke some horrible consequence.

"It just makes sense," Fridge retorted. "Besides, there's more than one reason why I won't be entering that house first. I've watched enough horror films to know the black guy should never enter first."

"This is real life," Martha contradicted. "Not a Stephen King novel."

"Uh huh," Fridge retorted, "Then please explain the video game character that just happened to save our asses from a pack of wild ostriches that happen to be indigenous to Jumanji."

Matt's brow raised skeptically. "You feeling alright, Fridge? That was a pretty big word, and I don't want you to have an aneurysm."

Fridge frowned, slowly turning to face Matt with an expression that could be interpreted as a warning. "I'm not stupid, Mattie. I'd watch my mouth if I were you—"

"Um... Spence," Bethany interrupted the argument—probably saving her boyfriend's life—and brought their attention to a detail they'd somehow missed. "Has your door always been knocked off the hinges?"

"No..." Spencer's voice lingered to fill the following silence as the group's five sets of eyes focused on the damage.

Fridge nudged Spencer forward again. "Careful, Buddy."

"Why me?" Spencer insisted, facing the group while fighting against Fridge's efforts to push him forward.

"Because Bravestone's the leader," Matt replied. "We're just waiting on instructions."

"But I'm not—" Spencer ultimately cut himself off and threw his arms into the air, exasperated.

"How about this," Martha offered an alternative solution. "One. It's your house. Two. This whole thing is sorta your fault to begin with because if you hadn't gone back for the game, then fixed it, we wouldn't be in this mess."

"That," Spencer looked as if he wanted to defend himself, but lowered his finger with defeat, "that's fair."

He took a deep breath and adjusted the zipper on his coat to summon his courage before creeping forward to enter his own house. He lifted his hand to knock, but stopped once he noticed the looks he'd received from the others.

He sighed and muttered under his breath, "Man do I wish Roni were here... she'd have no problem going first. Likely because she'd run out of patience."

"Well Roni's not here because she's busy dealing with the other problem," Martha reminded him.

Spencer sighed again and took another step toward the door, hesitating only a moment longer before trying to push the door open further. As it was already knocked loose from the hinges, it simply fell to the ground with a thud. Spencer flinched, but as nothing attacked or immediately tried to kill them, he briefly let his guard down long enough to step inside.

The group had hardly stepped inside before freezing in shock. Fridge poorly attempted to lighten the mood. "You get a new couch?"

The group offered a combination of glares and blank stares before Bethany said what they were all thinking, "The living room is a freaking jungle, Fridge."

"I know that," Fridge retorted and rolled his eyes.

Somehow calling the living room a 'jungle' was an understatement. Vines hung from ceiling, connecting one floor to the next through the cracks that ran along the walls. There was a humid moisture that clung to the air as a breath of hot air compared to the winter air outside. An assortment of flowers were blooming through the wood floor and the carpet was easier to consider a swamp at this point... or maybe even quicksand.

"Watch your step," Spencer warned, inching further into the house.

Even though a sarcastic comment may have been warranted, none of the others offered an objection. They remained close behind Spencer as he headed toward the basement, where they just knew the source of the trouble had begun. Spencer reached his hand out to flip on the light switch, but the basement remained shrouded in darkness.

"Well that's not unnerving at all," Matt muttered under his breath.

Bethany nudged him, a clue to keep quiet as they were already nervous enough as it was. Keeping close, the group inched their way down the stairs; however, as Matt misstepped in the back, he took everyone down with him as he fell. He released a nervous chuckle to hide his abashed expression as the others groaned and glared.

"Sorry," he sheepishly apologized, but as he rose to his feet to dust himself off, his eyes widened at the eerie green glow just a few feet ahead of them. "Woah."

The junglesque setting had slightly changed to accommodate the dark as several bioluminescent flowers had sprouted and bloomed, covering the walls while creating a barrier between the group and where Spencer had left the game as multiple bushes and undergrowth had formed.

"You've got a serious weed problem, man," Fridge's nose wrinkled as he dusted himself off.

"I'm sorry, let me just call up the garden tender I keep on standby," Spencer retorted and rolled his eyes before taking a closer look at the lush vegetation. "Obviously the game has adapted more than we thought."

"Well we tried," Matt snapped his fingers before walking back toward the stairs, "looks like we should turn back and come up with a new plan."

Bethany reached out and grabbed his arm to pull him back. "We're not giving up that quickly, Mattie. We haven't even checked out the game yet."

"Yeah... that's the part I'm most concerned about," Matt replied.

"So which way?" Martha asked, placing her hands on her hips as she faced the bushes to confront the problem.

"How about straight through?" Fridge offered his opinion, lifting a large machete knife over his head before slicing through the first layer of plants.

"Where—" Spencer looked around in confusion. "Where did you get that?"

"It was propped up against the wall." Fridge shrugged.

"Ah okay." Matt nodded his head calmly before his incredulous outburst, "And you just thought that was normal?!"

"Is the game helping us get through?" Martha skeptically asked.

"It's almost like it wants us to get closer..." Bethany quietly noted.

"Then let's get closer," Fridge said in a deep tone as if threatening the game while taking another swing at the vegetation.

"Does anyone ever think maybe we shouldn't go the way that the demonic video game wants? No... of course not," Matt sighed, rolled his eyes, and continued to mutter under his breath as he followed the group through the path Fridge paved.

The eerie lighting grew stronger the closer they got to the heart of the room. Although they had expected the game itself to be the scariest part... it wasn't. The plants and vegetation had grown larger and wilder, not to mention somewhat sentient. From the corner of their eyes, they could all see some of the vines writhing in the shadows, but no one pointed them out for fear that they'd be real.

"Is that it?" Bethany asked, pointing out the game console that Spencer had left on a table, now covered in vines that displayed the inner mechanics of the machine.

"It was..." Spencer agreed, stepping closer to analyze the damage.

The uneasy feeling in Matt's chest grew stronger and his eyes flashed across the room, checking every nook and cranny for danger, but froze as he noticed the writhing plants they'd previously ignored. His eyes widened in horror and his tongue stammered as he tried to warn Spencer, but it was Fridge who actually completed the warning.

"Spencer, look out!" Fridge called, pulling Spencer away from the console as one of the plants that vaguely resembled a Venus fly trap spat a lump of ooze in the spot that he'd once been standing.

Martha jumped back in alarm. "What the hell?"

"Oh my gosh!" Bethany screamed, but her eyes were facing a completely different direction.

The group turned to see what she'd been so alarmed about, and immediately each of them paled. Concealed within a gelatinous mass was Spencer's mother, frozen with a look of fear on her face. Beside her, a man in a uniform was paralyzed in a similar situation, presumably being there to fix the air conditioning and heating units within the house that Spencer had mentioned earlier were broken.

"Mom!" Spencer cried out in alarm, stepping closer as if he planned to free her; however, Matt pulled him back. Spencer glared. "What are you doing—"

"Saving your skin," Matt interrupted and pointed toward the ground.

There was a bubbling puddle on the ground surrounding the gelatinous cubes. Although it wasn't obvious at first, it quickly came to light that anything touching the substance was immediately engulfed and paralyzed.

"It doesn't seem to be digesting anything," Martha noted, "simply preserving them."

"That's great..." Spencer calmly nodded his head before losing all self-composure. "How do we free them?!"

"Well everything usually goes back to normal when we end the game," Fridge reminded them.

"Um, how exactly do we end the game when we're not actually inside the game?" Matt skeptically asked. "It's not like the game has completely made its way into our world."

Martha nodded in agreement. "It's like it's fractured. Stuck between both."

"English, please," Bethany requested, earning an eager nod from Fridge.

"We can't end the game because technically we haven't started it," Matt explained. "But the pieces of the console are scattered around in these plants, and I don't know about you guys, but I really have no desire to go back to that nightmarish place."

"I'm not really seeing another choice here," Spencer contradicted, shaking his head. "Who else knows about this place more than us? I think... I think we're the only people that can make this right."

"We've beat the game twice now," Martha agreed after taking a deep breath. She then stepped beside Spencer and slid her fingers between his. "And we'll do it a third time if we stick together."

"You cannot be suggesting what I think you're suggesting," Fridge voiced his disapproval. "We came here to destroy the game, not take a joyride into the jungle."

Spencer's expression fell as he pleaded with the group. "A lot of people are going to get hurt if we don't do something. And we've seen that it's already started between the stampede of ostriches, to the jungle interior decoration, and... my mom."

His eyes drifted back toward the gelatinous cube. His lip trembled, betraying the courageous facade he was trying to present. Martha understood though, and took over. "Just one more time and we finish it for good this time."

Bethany sighed and nodded her head. "One last time."

Fridge and Matt glanced at the other with a blank expression before shaking their heads in unison. "Hell no."

"We have no idea how messed up that thing is," Matt insisted, still agreeing with Fridge. "If it's this bad here, I don't even want to know what it's like in there. What if we can't leave once we go in?"

Bethany took Matt's hand and his gaze softened as he looked into her calming blue eyes. When it came to her, he was helpless and his knees were already beginning to buckle as his strong will decayed.

"Trust me," she asked of him, "We'll be okay. We've got each other."

As much as his mind told him to turn back and leave the house, his heart kept his feet locked in place. He sighed and slowly nodded his head. "I trust you."

"This is why none of us are gonna make it to twenty-five," Fridge muttered under his breath, apparently also persuaded by the amount of peer pressure directed at him from Spencer and Martha. "Let's just get this over with."

As Fridge reached out toward the vines to pull them apart so that he could reach what was left of the console, a steady drumming echoed around the room. The pit of dread grew in the stomachs of each member of the party as they formed a circle around themselves to reduce their vulnerability.

The vines along the walls writhed, freeing themselves as if sentient enough to think for themselves. As one of the plants lunged toward Fridge, it suddenly dropped to the ground, shrieking as its head was severed from the roots.

The group looked up in surprise, then Bethany sighed with relief, "Alex."

Alex's overconfident smile beamed to hide his own fear as he gestured to the plants with the machete that Fridge had dropped sometime after they located the game. "You guys just can't keep out of trouble, can you?"

"Not that I don't appreciate the save," Spencer replied, "but what are you doing here?"

"I was originally just stopping by to see if you had seen the stampede on the news," Alex admitted, "but I see what you really need is weed killer."

"As great as this reunion is," Martha interjected, trying to get the group to focus as the plants around them hissed and rattled like caged snakes waiting to strike, "but I think we should get out of here."

"What about the game?" Spencer asked, turning to look over his shoulder at the broken console.

"Leave it," Matt replied, pushing him toward the stairs.

Spencer fought against him, reaching out toward the gelatinous mass that contained his mother. "I can't just—"

"We'll fix it," Matt promised, understanding why Spencer was so hesitant to leave, "but we have to go now. We need to regroup and come up with a plan."

"The plan was to end the game," Spencer insisted, still fighting against Matt as his focus shifted to reaching for the console, "and call out its name."

"It's not that simple, Spence—"

Matt tried to protest, but froze as his eyes drifted up toward the staircase and met the gaze of the very last person he expected to see at Spencer's house—his own father. Matt completely forgot about his object of holding Spencer back and released the other boy as he stared at his father in confusion.

"Dad?" Matt questioned as his brow furrowed. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to make sure you were alright," Principal Bentley explained. "I saw the news and the stampede at Nora's, and after calling your uncle to make sure he and Danny made it safely out of town, I drove to check on you when I didn't hear anything."

Matt subconsciously pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced down at it long enough to see that he'd missed over a dozen calls. "I'm fine, but we need to go, Dad. It's not safe here."

"I'll say," Principal Bentley agreed, looking around the room to emphasize his point. "I'm not sure this is where you should be hanging out, Matthew. I can't even begin to imagine the mold and—"

"Really, Dad?!" Matt incredulously asked, throwing his arms into the air exasperated. "Now is not the time to critique my choice of friends. You need to leave."

"Matthew, I don't understand what's going on around here," Principle Bentley placed his foot down as he reprimanded his son. "But your judgment is lapsing in the department of making good choices. At least we can both agree that this building is hardly safe for children—"

"I'm not a kid, Dad," Matt interrupted while raising his tone as his heat warmed his face. He could feel Bethany's hand on his shoulder, warning him about his temper; however, he failed to listen. "You can't keep treating me like one either."

"That's not what I was saying, Matthew," Principal Bentley contradicted, shaking his head which only fueled the fire of the argument. "If you would only listen—"

"Do you even hear yourself right now?" Matt interrupted again. "All I've done my entire life is listen. It's no secret that you think I'm some monumental screw up that can't make a single decision correctly. Just let me live my life without feeling like I have to become an exact replica of you!"

"Mattie..." Bethany warned but was again ignored.

"I finally find something that I want to do with my life but you can't accept a world where I don't depend on you to make my decisions for me," Matt continued, extending his arms to refer to himself, "You told me to grow up and become a man, Dad, so if you don't like what you see, too bad."

Matt took a deep breath to add to his rant, but the hairs on the back of his neck stuck straight up as a shiver of electricity shot down his spine. He closed his mouth and slowly turned his head to face the center of the room where the beating of drums echoed once more.

"What the hell did you do, Spencer?" Fridge asked hysterically as he pointed out "their team leader" standing with his hands around the busted console.

Spencer's eyes widened in horror as he seemed to realize what he'd done, snapping out of some sort of trance as his gaze drifted toward his mother. "...I couldn't just leave her..."

The beating of the drums grew louder and quicker, instilling panic in those that understood its meaning. Which is the exact moment that history chose to repeat itself for a third time.

The individual components of the game sparked and glitched to life, vibrating to the rhythm of the drums while emitting a glowing green light. The cracked television screen suspended from the ceiling flashed to life and stuttered like a broken record.

"W-w-welcome to—Welcome to J-j-j—Welcome to Jumanji!"

"Mattie?"

Matt turned his head just in time to see Bethany's eyes widen in horror at the sight of her fingers receding into bits and pixels as she was sucked toward the game. He lunged toward her, but she was gone before he could grasp her hand. Fridge and Martha were gone just as quickly. Then he could feel his own body disintegrating before his very eyes.

It was unlike the sensations before. The first time was disorienting, the second: uncomfortable, the third was painful unlike anything he'd experienced before. He could feel every pixel shredding itself apart to regenerate within the game, if that's where the device was even taking him. He released a raw wail that tore at his vocal cords as his vision faded and he lost consciousness.